The nature of the projects is that they will work at different speeds.

Computational modelling and verification to establish a fundamental understanding is at the heart of all the projects and has been the focus of the early stage work. The scientists are now beginning to move into experimental work and will eventually go on to industrial scale trials.

Some of the projects have also started to use real operational data from Rio Tinto sites.

Dr Gareth Morris takes a closer look at the behaviour of particles in bubble films using complex simulations